5G makes IP network a trillion-dollar market, and 8 years of network upgrades have been hard on operators

Through the concentrated bombardment of media propaganda, many friends know that 5G can make the Internet speed faster. But compared with the change in Internet speed, 5G brings more interconnection of all things, prompting thousands of industries to upgrade. However, the 5G network needs to be upgraded for 8 years for the back-end IP network. Without the support of IP network upgrade, the 5G network will only "sound good".

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5G puts IP networks to the test

The characteristics of 5G networks are eMBB (enhanced mobile broadband), mMTC (massive machine type communications), and uRLLC (ultra-reliable ultra-low latency communications). This puts crushing pressure on IP networks. The bandwidth performance of the backend IP network must be increased by more than 10 times, and the number of access devices that can be supported is more than a thousand times. In addition, any failure in the 5G network will bring a very poor experience to users.

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The number of 5G base stations has increased significantly

The bandwidth of each base station should start from 10G

Affected by 5G's high-speed broadband, massive traffic, and transmission frequency bands, a single 5G base station requires bandwidth starting at 10Gbps. In addition, the interconnected world brought by 5G will allow most of the objects around us to be connected to the network, so the number of terminals that rely on 5G will increase dramatically. Not only that, applications such as cloud VR games, Internet of Vehicles, and remote surgery that are often promoted in the 5G era not only require millisecond-level responses, but also cannot have any lag or network failures, and have extremely high requirements for network reliability.

Operator upgrades create a 1.2 trillion market

As the saying goes, "before the troops move, the food and grass must go first." In order to realize the application of 5G networks, operators have put a lot of effort into upgrading and transforming IP networks. In terms of ultra-wide networks, network equipment such as operator routers and switches need to be upgraded to support 50GE/400GE. This is only for the equipment at the access layer. The access capacity of network equipment at the aggregation core layer must reach 200GE and 400GE.

It takes 8 years to complete

In terms of base station construction and network equipment infrastructure upgrades, the three major operators estimate that the investment scale will reach 1.2 trillion. Network equipment upgrades will be a growing market, because the number of 5G base stations will be twice that of 4G base stations, and the average annual market size will reach 150 billion yuan. Experts from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology even said that this construction cycle is likely to be around 8 years.

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Reduce manual labor pressure

Introducing intelligent troubleshooting

In addition to improving the performance of hardware equipment, unified management and maintenance of scattered base stations is also a headache for operators. In reality, various emergencies are inevitable. Through intelligent technology, when network congestion occurs, traffic can be automatically arranged according to different applications, and network traffic can be prioritized.

In addition, operators also need to introduce artificial intelligence into base stations to predict fault points in advance. After predicting the fault, the base station automatically reports to the operation and maintenance center, and the operation and maintenance center then dispatches technicians to troubleshoot in advance to avoid sudden failures.

Conclusion

IP networks have been around for more than 30 years. Faced with the surging tide of 5G, IP networks are facing unprecedented challenges. Operators must accelerate the performance upgrade of IP network equipment, and also make IP networks intelligent and combine software-defined networks to form innovative applications.

"If you want to be rich, build roads first" is just like the relationship between roads and cars. Only better roads can make cars run safer and faster.